Kaikhosro IV Gurieli

That same year, Kaikhosro deposed and expelled Vakhtang, making Mamia prince-regnant and himself a regent, a position he nominally shared with the dowager-princess Marine.

[2] Once in power, Kaikhosro Gurieli embarked on an energetic campaign to stabilize the impoverished principality, troubled by internal dissensions, Ottoman encroachments, abductions and slave-trade.

He summoned joint lay and church councils, threatened slave traders with death, and persecuted the recalcitrant nobles, accused of being pro-Ottoman or involved in slave-trading.

He tried to dissuade Mamia from signing two articles in the treaty with Russia stipulating that Gurian subjects were to be tried by the Imperial Russian law and deprived the government of Guria of the privilege to tax transit trade.

[5] On the occasion of finalizing the Russo–Gurian treaty in 1811, Kaikhosro Gurieli was granted by the Russian government the rank of podpolkovnik (lieutenant-colonel), but "this wily man" continued to be treated with caution and suspicion.

In 1820, Kaikhosro offered shelter to the fugitive Imeretian prince Ivane Abashidze, Mamia Gurieli's brother-in-law, who had led a rebel faction against the Russian suppression of Imereti's church institutions.

The Russian commander, Colonel Puzyrevsky, was killed by a Gurian on the road to Kaikhosro's castle at Shemokmedi when the officer lashed out with his whip; his troops retreated.